“Create a community around core values and everything else will come,” advises Kent Thiry, who spoke recently at Denver’s Association for Corporate Growth (ACG). Instead of focusing on revenues, he says, focus on your leadership behaviors and honoring the behaviors that demonstrate your company values. For example, if you honor the value of being on time, you’ll find that everyone is on time.

The collective behaviors, assumptions and values that make up an organization’s culture are often unconscious. They’re also extensive and enduring, so they matter in getting you to your target. Your culture is what made you what you are. Is it what you want to be? And, more important, is it supporting you in achieving your vision?

Elitists tend to believe that their natural talents determine success. They prefer to be right than listen to feedback or make adjustments; and they are rigid and controlling. As a result, elitist teams produce cultures that lack trust, collaboration and accountability; and where adversarial interactions and relationships are common. Employees flounder without positive role models or a clear path to success.

You measure success by results, which are achieved when people are held accountable for achieving them, not always by how they go about it. When you confuse activity with results you may be making breathtakingly costly mistakes for your business.